Margo on Twelfth Night at BAM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/10/06 at 4:55pm

I don't have the time to write a full review, but I did want to give people a heads up about a truly enchanting production of TWELFTH NIGHT currently playing at BAM through Sunday, as part of an extended world tour that has taken it from Moscow to London and now around the US.

Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, famous for leading London's Cheek by Jowl company, have created a piece that's bursting with visual eloquence and performed with stunning fluidity by an all-male, all-Russian company that manages to display not only all of the play's humor, but also its melancholy emotional core. It's striking that though the play is performed in Russian (with English surtitles), through their well-modulated, but animated physicality and highly expressive manner, they manage to bring the story and the characters to life with more lucidity and coherence than in most of the many English-language productions of the play I've seen over the years.

The action is presented on a bare white expanse (recalling the look of many Peter Brook productions over the years), broken up by a series of ten floor-to-ceiling banners -- which are dark colored during night scenes, and light colored for outdoor and daytime scenes. The play opens with the actors dressed simply and strolling out, playing music with a Latin bossa nova beat (Shakespeare's songs throughout the evening are given a similar sound, which is seductively effective). The play's female characters are then quickly adorned with simple wrap skirts and the play begins.

The all-male casting lends an interesting twist to the central conceit of gender confusion, adding another layer of humor to the character of Viola, so that here you have a man playing a woman playing a man. And the performances are all so precise that there's never a moment's confusion throughout the evening of a given character's gender. In fact, all of the performances are flawless by this well-honed, obviously well-trained ensemble.

The design elements are all superbly executed, especially the lighting which effectively delineates the various locations scene to scene, and uses a color palette that reflects the constant shifts in tone and mood and creates many stunning stage pictures.

Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod's staging at times verges on true choreography, moving bodies around that vast space with precision and alacrity, making clever use of the BAM Harvey stage.

It's quite an achievement for a production of a Shakespearean comedy to be so deft and lively that, despite being performed in a foreign language (or at least foreign to most of us in this particular audience), it loses so little of the wit and insightfulness of the play. This production manages to find all the soul and the humor and humanity in the text, so that nothing seems lost in translation.

It's a truly magical experience and well worth the trip to Brooklyn for those who can make one of the remaining performances.

http://www.bam.org/events/07TWEL/07TWEL.aspx
http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/twelfth_night.htm

Updated On: 11/10/06 at 04:55 PM

[Caroline-Q-or-TBoo]

Posted: 11/10/06 at 5:10pm

read the Times review and REALLY want to see this. looks fab!

[moulinrougehk]

Posted: 11/10/06 at 7:33pm

I have studied this play and I really want to see it (if only I could)!

Margo: have u received my PM? please reply...

[inlovewithjerryherman]

Posted: 11/10/06 at 10:02pm

shoot - why do i live in philadelphia.

Twelfth Night is far and above my favorite shakespeare play.